Iron Yard, Coding School With Three Texas Campuses, Shuts Down

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The Iron Yard coding school, which has campuses in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, TX, announced Thursday that it is shutting down operations.

In a blog post on the school’s website, communications director Lelia King wrote that “the Iron Yard has made the difficult decision to cease operations at all campuses after teaching out remaining summer cohorts. We will finish out summer classes completely, including career support.”

Iron Yard was founded four years ago in Greenville, SC, and its website lists 15 locations across the country. Last year, when my colleague Sarah Schmid wrote about Iron Yard opening a location in Detroit, she noted the coding school has 20 U.S. campuses, as well as one in the United Kingdom. (On Thursday, Detroit was not listed among the school’s locations.)

Last week, a competing coding school, Dev Bootcamp, announced it was closing, too, according to media reports. (Dev Bootcamp was acquired by Kaplan in 2014.) Coding schools have sprung up across the country to meet employer demand for software and web-design skills that are not often as easily obtained in traditional higher education or workforce development programs.

But Course Report, which tracks the industry, said such programs are for the most part doing well, the recent closures aside. According to a coding school market study released Wednesday, there are currently 94 full-time coding schools in the US and Canada, with seven closing and 15 opening in 2016. Course Report estimated that the bootcamp market would grow to 22,814 graduates by the end of this year, up from 15,048 in 2016.

The fate of Iron Yard Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund established in 2012, is unclear. The Greenville News reported that the firm has invested in more than 62 technology startups, which have raised more than $100 million in follow-on financing and created more than 500 jobs.

The Iron Yard last year also helped launch the Tech Opportunity Fund to further increase diversity in the tech world through code school scholarships, according to a Techpoint article. The fund planned to distribute $100 million in scholarships to underrepresented groups in tech.

Iron Yard did not yet respond to an e-mailed inquiry for comment.

“While our journey is coming to an end, we will always take pride in the thousands of people our staff helped to launch new careers,” wrote the Iron Yard’s King in the blog post.

Angela Shah is the editor of Xconomy Texas. She can be reached at ashah@xconomy.com or (214) 793-5763. Follow @angelashah